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NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: HURRICANES v PENGUINS

May 18, 2009

Paul Maurice

PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA: Game One

Penguins Â– 3
Hurricanes - 2

THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach.

Q. Just a quick update on Ruutu and Cole, if you know. And then in the first period if you had your chances with Fleury?
COACH MAURICE: It was real good. I liked the way it came out. We had the two real good penalty kills. I like the looks we got on the power play. Obviously, he had a little better awareness of the guy coming out of the box. We were a little back on our heels a little bit. But on the two guys I'll know more tomorrow. I don't know much right now, we'll see how they wake up and how they feel.

Q. What did they do in the third period? You guys didn't get a shot for more than half the period. Did they tighten up defensively? What happened there?
COACH MAURICE: I thought for a lot of the night we were looking for a better option. I think they did a good job getting the shooting lanes taken away, the first option. And we were a little slow moving the puck to open up other lanes. They played well, and they skated well.

Q. Can you talk about the two goalies and how they kept the game close and low scoring?
COACH MAURICE: There were some good chances at both ends. I thought they had good looks, too. And you looked at the final score, it wasn't played like a 3-2 game. There are a lot more higher end offensive chances than that. And they both played exceptionally well. So that will give both teams hope that they've got enough good offensive chances that they think they're still in it. And got enough great saves that they hope their goaltender can hold that.

Q. For the third straight series you guys lost the first game, but do you draw a lot more positives on this game considering, for example, Sidney didn't even register a shot on net?
COACH MAURICE: Yeah, there were some good things in the game, we know we can play a little bit better than we did. I think in the first two games we were -- we forced ourselves into a lot of mistakes. I thought tonight they did a pretty good job. They were patient and disciplined. And I don't think we made quite -- we didn't handle the puck as well as I'd like to. I thought there were just some pucks that came out to our forwards that we didn't handle it. We were slow moving it from our backhand.
But some of that was a completely different style of game than the last 14 that we've just played. I mean, that went from even Erik Cole going to the net, it would be, you know, they exchanged 14 punches before they established net front position, and tonight's game they were interference penalties. So it was a little bit of an adjustment for us from what we've seen. So we'll have to make that adjustment.

Q. When Ruutu goes down very early in the game, how does that change your game plan? I know for a while you tried to play your fourth line with different centers, and then you got away from it for a while. Can you go through that whole thought process there?
COACH MAURICE: You lose a guy, and you're looking first to fill the immediate hole. We did that with Pat Eaves for a while, and dropped centers down between the two, and we moved Brind'Amour up, and moved Jokinen to the wing. And I liked the nine passes they have in front of their goaltender. So I thought they were doing some good things to leave that line alone and move guys up, and Erik Cole went down, and at that point we were running three anyway.

Q. I know you addressed Cole, but do you think that was a knee on knee?
COACH MAURICE: Yes, I did. I felt that was, yeah.

Q. And it's a lower body injury for now?
COACH MAURICE: A lower body injury, correct, yeah.

End of FastScripts

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